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Comment by frereubu | Hacker News Reader

I've managed to get around that by returning to my Nikon FM2. People react quite differently when it's clearly a film camera - even better if it's a medium format camera. That also gets around the nagging feeling that you're being guided in what you're taking by how it will appear online too. I don't have any social media accounts aside from HN and a BlueSky account that tweets the diary entries of an 18th century naturalist so I have no motivation to think about that side of things. It's a lovely feeling of my work being private because I can't be tempted in the moment to share a photo online. It feels much healthier.

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The best is making albums with numbered tissue paper silhouettes and the peoples names written on the back with a blurb and the date.

>It's a lovely feeling of my work being private because I can't be tempted in the moment to share a photo online. It feels much healthier.

I find people like it a lot and even give me contact info to get the picture I took of them which is cool.

Heh I’ve often daydreamed of one day setting up a darkroom and buying a couple medium format cameras, I wondered if that would be disarming enough (I love medium format and TLRs).

Can’t do it while I’m renting, but maybe one day!

Go for it anyway! I have a small NYC apt and fit everything I need for darkroom development into a small crate. I can scan negatives with a small setup here, but do have to go to a community darkroom for enlarger printing.

Consider doing a hybrid workflow. The equipment for developing film is quite compact. I keep all of my film development chemicals and equipment stored in a small tupperware under the bathroom sink. You can also buy a lightproof bag, so you don't even need a light tight room to load the film.

The second half of my process is to "scan" my film using a macro lens and my DSLR. It takes about 2 hours to go from exposed film to developed and scanned film. Only about 30 minutes of that time is active, most of it is waiting for the film to dry since I don't have a drying a cabinet.

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